Tom Soto: Diversity in Asset Management Meets Carbon Negative Investing

Beyond Carbon

Tom Soto: Diversity in Asset Management Meets Carbon Negative Investing

Georges and Chris talk with impact investor Tom Soto on his trajectory from civil rights activist to a leader in environmental technology and renewable energy, including his new fund strategy that enhances biomass plants using forest standing deadwood to create 24-hour dispatchable power that is fully renewable and net carbon negative.

Guest

Tom Soto, Founder and Managing Partner, Latimer Partners, LLC

Background

Tom Soto is a long-time impact investor, entrepreneur and civil rights leader working at the intersection of politics, activism and finance. Tom has founded four private equity investment funds with a focus on clean technology, AI, Fintech and infrastructure. He now manages his family investment office, Latimer Partners, LLC. As a gay, Latino fund manager, Tom has been a pioneering voice for diversity in fund management and technology movement.

Conversation

• The son two of California’s most well-respected Latino Civil Rights leaders, Tom credits his father Assemblyman Phil Soto, his mother Nell Soto, and the culture of community service and improvement that propelled him to the intersection of politics, activism, environmentalism and the investment world.
• D4IR (Diversity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution) takes technology and traditional hardware, combines it with software within the energy transition world and puts it into one format.
• To avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius, we have to find opportunities that go net carbon negative on a mass scale.
• Monetizing carbon and biochar to fuel fully renewable biomass facilities that feed peak and base loads will keep the economy running when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.